Thea was having a bad day. That much was obvious at this point. After the girl had run away, she and the rest of the party agreed to split up and search for her. She thought it would have been easy. After all, you don’t see a small wolf girl in a pink bathrobe and nothing else everyday.

And yet, somehow, she had disappeared without a trace. Sure, every now and then, someone would say they had seen her, but they hadn’t actually paid attention to where she was going.

She wasn’t sure if it was because she was small, if it was another effect of her…pacifying aura, or if it was just because people were so wrapped up in their own lives that they didn’t pay attention to their surroundings. She guessed it was a mix of all three.

Eventually, however, she got a lead. A street vendor, who had since changed locations, had seen the little girl enter Aaron’s Smithery. It didn’t take long for her to arrive, as she jogged the entire way.

When she entered, she didn’t see Aaron at the front, so he was probably in the back. She started heading that way, as he’d hopefully, finally have some answers for her. She rounded the corner, and was greeted with the sight of the girl. At first, she was relieved.

Then she realized what the girl was sitting on, and the fact that the girl’s mouth and hands were coated in blood. Sitting under the girl was the town’s best blacksmith, with his head ripped open, and, from what she could see, completely empty.

“Uh, hi?”

Thea fell to her knees. How was she supposed to deal with this? She’d normally kill the person responsible, but she couldn’t in this case. The girl just had to have some type of passive aura. Was she just supposed to take her in? Reprimand her? Would that even work? She wasn’t even human.

The girl stood up, grabbed something from Aaron’s corpse, then approached Thea. She crawled onto her lap, rested her head on her shoulders, and promptly fell asleep. Thea just stared at her for a moment. She sighed. She could deal with the ramifications of this later.

Wrapping her arms around the girl, she stood up. She…she needed to tell the guild about this. That was about all she could think of doing. This girl was proving to be too much to handle, and she had only been dealing with her for less than a day.

Shifting the girl around in her arms so as to better hide the blood on the girl’s face, she turned and walked back to the guild. It wouldn’t do for people to see her carrying a bloodied child in her arms.

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Briar was slightly confused. She had expected to be attacked on the spot. But no. The woman just fell to her knees. Guided by some instinct - one more natural than the one that had led her to kill and eat the smith - she approached the woman, crawled onto her lap and fell asleep.

She had been expecting to be chained up when she awoke, if she even did wake up, but no. She woke up in the same room from earlier, except this time, the window was visibly locked and barricaded.

She was still wearing her comfy robe, but her hands had been cleaned from the blood. She guessed her face had also been cleaned. Who knew eating people alive was such a messy ordeal?

Getting up, she looked around the room for something to entertain herself with. She’d start to go stir crazy without any stimulation. She ignored the pile of dirty laundry again. She felt like it had started to stink even worse since she left.

She tried the door and found it locked too. With a sigh, she returned to the center of the room. The only other things in here were the beds and the boards that were nailed into the wall and blocking the window.

And then, as she was staring at the beds, an idea popped into her head. It…should be fine. Besides, ever since she had eaten the smith’s brain, she just had this urge to create. Combine that with her near constant need to move, and you had a recipe for destruction.

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She was just putting the finishing touches on her project when she heard the door unlock and swing open. She quickly scampered into the little pillow fortress she had built. Well, it was a pillow fort in the sense that it was cloth draped over a few supports, and had a bedding of fluff coating the ground. And she had only needed to utterly gut two of the beds.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

It had been rather hard to keep the supports up, but she managed to repurpose some of the nails from the bedframe to keep it upright. And the fluff smelled of sheep. She knew the smell from when she visited a farm in her previous life during eighth grade. Sheep wool has a distinct smell to it, and, for some reason, she rather liked the smell now. She was proud of her creation.

She gathered some of the fluff and surrounded herself with it, before she glanced at the door and saw the giant of a man frozen in place. He half-turned back.

“Maybe we just shouldn’t leave her alone in general?”

“Why, what happened now?”

The woman who had carried her peeked into the room, and, upon seeing Briar’s makeshift pillow fort, groaned.

“Of course she’d destroy the beds. Haaah. This is coming out of our pockets, isn’t it?”

A third voice responded, one Briar wasn’t familiar with.

“Of course. This isn’t a charity. If you want that, the church is down the street and to the left. Now, Jorreck, if you would kindly step aside. I would like to speak to the…child.”

As the giant, Jorreck, stepped aside, the woman and the third person entered the room. The third person looked ancient, close to nothing but skin and bones. Though, he gave off that kind grandfather vibe. You know the one. The one who would spoil you, but wouldn’t miss an opportunity to tease you.

It was also at this point that Briar realized she had understood them. She couldn’t before, and she doubted they had learned English in the short time they had known each other. If English even existed here.

She thought about it for a moment, running through everything she had done since she had last heard them speak. Was it her eating the dude? But how did that help? She felt like something had happened when she was eating, but she couldn’t remember what it was. Was that it? She understood the language now? If so, that’d be great. She’d have to venture down that avenue of thought later, though. She had missed what the old dude had been saying, and he was staring at her. Had he asked a question?

“What?” Her voice came out slightly muffled through the fluff. The old man sighed.

“As I said, my name is Finn, and I’m the leader of this guild branch. The woman standing next to me is Theadora, though she prefers Thea. I asked you what your name was.”

“Oh! I’m Briar.” He blinked a few times, as if he had expected more.

“Well, Briar, can you tell me how old you are?” She thought about it. She doubted he wanted to know how old she was in her past life, though she had already forgotten. The days bled into each other, and when you don’t celebrate your birthday anymore, it’s easy to forget.

She also doubted he’d believe her when she said she was less than a day old. This left her with the only available option of basing her age off of how old the wolf had been.

She tried counting the days, but quickly discovered how inefficient that was. A niggling thought made her pause. Hadn’t people used to measure time in seasons? Starting over, she counted how many times the wolf had survived a winter. One, two…eight? The wolf was eight years old? Wasn’t that ancient in dog years? Oh well.

“Eight frosts.” Thea muttered something under her breath, but it was, surprisingly, quiet enough that she couldn’t pick up on it. Finn raised an eyebrow at her response.

“I’m presuming that you mean that time of year when everything gets cold when you say ‘frost’?” She nodded. “Well, that might explain some…things. Now, do you know anything about your pacifying aura?”

She tilted her head at that one. Her pacifying…what? The look of confusion on her face must have answered his question, as he just muttered a quiet, “Thought so.”

“Now, I only have two more questions for you. Why did you leave the room earlier, instead of staying put?”

“I couldn’t sit still. There was nothing to do. I had to move, but there was nothing in here. And I wanted to explore! I’ve never been in a town before.” Technically, she had, but the wolf hadn’t. Eh, but who cares. She’s the wolf now.

Finn just nodded. “Now, lastly. Why did you kill that man?” Ooh, a tough one. She was gonna live by her tried and true practice of truthfulness. Telling the truth always makes things easier, unless it would be directly detrimental to yourself. And besides, lies became hard to keep track of after a while.

“I don’t know.” She grinned up at Finn, in the way that only an innocent child could. She had mastered acting ages ago, if not lying.

“That’s it? You just attacked him for no reason?”

“No. I just…when I saw him, I felt like I had to. I had to kill him. But I don’t know why.” Finn deflated at this answer. It had obviously not been what he was expecting.

“Well, thank you for answering my questions. Do you think you can stay in this room, and not destroy the furniture?” She shrugged, and he sighed and shook his head. He turned and walked out the door, followed by Thea. She saw Jorreck lean in to grab the door, and they made eye contact. He quickly averted his eyes and closed the door.

Well, that went great. She looked around. Wait. Shit. She could have built her pillow fort much easier if she had used the actual bed frames to prop it up. Fuck.